What happens when you don’t grow hair after severe hair loss or develop baldness? You should go for hair regrowth treatments that controls hair loss and assists in regrowth.

Choosing the hair regrowth treatment is often determined by the causes of hair loss as well pattern or type of hair loss. No worries, even if you developed baldness or suffer from receding hairline or bald spots on your scalp, there are many hair regrowth treatments that can help you regrow hair.

Types of Hair Growth Treatment

Let us see in detail about the different types of hair regrowth treatment.

Medications and Hormone Replacement Therapies for Hair Regrowth

When you have tried so much at home and couldn’t regrow hair. Before trying any medicine for hair growth, you should consult with a physician. You may also consult a trichologist or dermatologist to identify the cause of poor hair growth.

Hormone Replacement Therapy

Hormone plays a vital role in many important functions. There are a couple of hormones that lead to severe hair loss and prevents further growth of hair. Lack of or abundance of certain hormones decide whether you will have adequate hair growth or not!

Estrogen Supplements

Estrogen, the female sex hormone shares a significant role in impacting the hair health, both positively and negatively. Sometimes, deficiency of estrogen hormone, especially in women, leads to severe hair loss.

Estrogen is responsible for many ‘womanly’ functions in the body. Healthy and lustrous locks define the beauty and charm of women. In fact, one of the responsibilities and a major role of estrogen is hair growth on the scalp! It not only controls hair loss but also stimulates healthy hair growth.

Estrogen affects the hair during and after pregnancy where women suffer from hormonal fluctuations. It is also more noticeable in menopausal women. If your hair loss is caused due to low estrogen, you can discuss with your doctor and get the required hormone supplements. Hormone replacement therapy may restore estrogen levels that then contains hair loss and helps in hair regrowth.

Androgenic Alopecia Treatment

Similar case is found in men who suffer from male pattern baldness, which is caused by the predominance of the male sex hormone, testosterone. This condition is termed as androgenic alopecia. Androgens are a group of hormones that play a role in development and maintenance of male traits, where testosterone is the major hormone. When testosterone mixes with other hormones, it releases a substance called Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT is a derivative of the male hormone testosterone and is the enemy of hair follicles on head. It shrinks the hair follicles and leads to permanent loss of hair, resulting with male pattern baldness. Sometimes women too suffer from androgenic alopecia. It can occur in them with only a minute fraction of the level of testosterone that men have.

Generally, two drugs are recommended for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia. They are minoxidil and finasteride.

Minoxidil

Minoxidil is a type of vasodilator medicine. Vasodilator broadens or expands the blood vessels to ensure optimal blood flow. Minoxidil is one of the most effective hair regrowth treatments, especially in case of androgenetic alopecia. It is available in form of oral as well as topical supplements.

Minoxidil stops hair loss and promotes hair growth quickly. It stimulates blood flow by widening the blood vessels in the scalp, which stimulates the inactive hair follicles. However, positive changes cannot be noted before at least 4 months have lapsed. Topical treatment has to be taken indefinitely because once it is stopped, it rapidly reverses the condition and brings about the pre-treatment balding pattern.

Topical treatment effectively addresses the various patterns of hair loss

Hair regrowth can be felt in about 4 months time

Suitable for both, men and women

It is available as OTC drug in a some countries, yet getting a prescription is recommended. Any medication needs to be prescribed by physician after examining the overall health of the person who wants hair regrowth.

Recommended dosage is 5 % concentration solution for men and 2 % concentration for women. Those who have just started balding due to androgenic alopecia show the maximum hair growth in minimum time period.

• There are, however, some side effects to minoxidil treatment.
• Temporary hair loss (it happens in most of the hair regrowth treatment)
• Mild burning sensation of the eyes (due to enlargement of blood vessels)
• Allergy, rashes, inflammation, etc. If this happens, notify your physician immediately and stop further application of the drug
• Hair loss restarts when you stop using minoxidil

Finasteride

Finasteride is a 5-alpha reductase type 2 inhibitor but it is not an anti-androgen drug. It is given orally for stopping hair loss and for hair re-growth too. Women are not given this drug because it can lead to ambiguous genitalia in a developing male fetus. Even in post menopausal women, these medication of hair re-growth has not shown any positive results. . Finasteride, like minoxidil, must be taken indefinitely because stopping it causes gradual progression of disorder.

A follow-up study for 10 years was conducted upon men using finasteride 1 mg daily for androgenic alopecia. It showed better improvements in patients older than 30 years or men who had higher androgenetic alopecia levels.

Other medicines for androgenic alopecia

Some other drugs are also used for treating androgen alopecia as they are potentially helpful medications for hair re-growth in such condition. These are the medicines that act as androgen suppressants such as spironolactone, oral contraceptives. They are usually used for women with androgenetic alopecia.

Steroids for Hair Regrowth

When we hear about steroids, we often think about athletes! Okay, they use anabolic steroids to build up muscle. Steroids are also used for many critical illnesses in form of injection as well as pills. Corticosteroids, a type of steroids, are used to lessen the over-activity of immune system and also to reduce swelling. Simply put, it weakens the immune system. Immunity is essential to resist against illnesses. However, in many cases, the immune system gets mutated and negatively affects healthy cells and tissues. Steroids come as a savior to suppress the immunity from damaging health.

In many cases, the hair follicles remain active but they need a trigger to grow. Especially, baldnes.